


The Conference Job - Part 2

by Tieleen



Category: Leverage, Supernatural
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-05
Updated: 2012-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-01 04:09:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/351780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tieleen/pseuds/Tieleen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Parker," the woman says. She tilts her head and blinks. "It's nice to meet you." Jo's never heard a more rehearsed-sounding line in her life, and considering re: too much time spent with the Winchesters, that's really pretty amazing.</p><p> </p><p>This is a completed story, broken into three parts for purimgifts; part one is <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/351779">here</a>, and part three <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/351781">here</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Conference Job - Part 2

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Keenir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/gifts).



"This is important too," the woman says. "Stop yelling at me!" a pause. "You _were_ yelling."

Almost there; the woman's eyes are nowhere near Jo's waist. She's still not planning on a fight, but she has no idea what's going on, and getting her fingers on something sharp is going to make her feel a lot better about that. There's always the possibility that this is all a ploy to get her distracted from someone coming up on them, but if that's it, that person's going to be in for a pretty rude surprise because Jo's hand is just --

Her knife is gone.

"No," the woman says, scowling at the potted plant to Jo's left. She looks like she's about to kick the floor a little. "Eliot can do that! I'll be back before we have to leave. Eliot, you can do that, right?" Her eyes flick to Jo's, focus a little; she rolls her eyes at her. Then she turns away, still playing with --

Well, she's playing with Jo's knife, and Jo would swear this lady never came nearer than three steps away from her, so yeah, she's definitely in the zone of 'extremely freaked out and a little bit murderous' now.

"I'm going away now," the woman says, then raises her hand to her ear. Jo blinks again. That... makes sense, probably, except for how it really doesn't.

"You're wired?" she says. That seems both ridiculously Mission Impossible and entirely too normal.

"Yeah," the woman says, like that's obvious. She frowns. "We're supposed to, you know," an indecipherable gesture Jo can only assume is meant to indicate her ear, "Subvocalize. But that just looks weird if you're standing in front of people."

"Right," Jo says. Obviously weird would be bad.

The woman nods, seeming comletely at ease with their current place in the conversation. She smiles at Jo expectantly.

"...Can I have my knife back?" Jo says. She can't believe she's asking that.

"Huh?"

Jo points at her hand silently.

She glances down, looking entirely surprised to find Jo's knife there. "Oh! Sorry. I didn't mean to do that." There's a flip Jo's eyes can't entirely track and then the knife is held out to her, handle first, and the woman is looking at her expectantly again.

"What," Jo says. She weighs her options. She doesn't know what monsters exactly wear a wire and steal your knife and then give it back. Not that she knows too many people who do that, either, and there's something extremely odd about this one -- besides all the other odd things -- that's making Jo's spider sense tingle like crazy. 

"You're a hunter?" She says, in the end, even though she doesn't have words for how unlikely that is.

"No," the woman says. Then she pauses thoughtfully. "Well, kind of. A little. But not the same way." She looks pleased.

"I have no idea what that means," Jo tells her.

"That's okay," the woman says.

"Well, just... what's your name?"

There's a pause that's probably the most familiar thing about this conversation so far; Jo honestly expects the answer to be something like 'Courtney Love.' Except something less stupid. Too much time spent with the Wincherters is killing her faith in humanity.

"Parker," the woman says. She tilts her head and blinks. "It's nice to meet you." Jo's never heard a more rehearsed-sounding line in her life, and considering re: too much time spent with the Winchesters, that's really pretty amazing.

"Sure," she says. "It's great. I'm Jo. Look -- are you here about the disappearances?"

Parker shakes her head. "We're here about the grant scam."

"You're scamming people?"

"No!" Parker says. Jo waits. "...Yes." 

She's going to take two weeks off after this one, come hell or high water. This is _worse_ than spending time with the Winchesters. She wishes a little that her mom were here, since she's always been a lot better at scaring people into talking some damned sense. On the other hand, it's entirely possible that her mom would have shot this lady by now.

"We're stopping the scam. We fight the bad guys when they're hurting people," Parker says. "See? Like hunters. Sort of."

"...You kill people who run scams?"

"We don't kill them, we scam them back." Parker pauses, looking pleased again. "Sometimes we taser them a little."

"You know, what I'm realizing," Jo says, pulling her EMF meter back out and starting to inch away, "Is that this has nothing to do with me and it's none of my business. I'm just going to go away and look for non-scam-related ghosts, okay?"

"But we can help you," Parker says. Jo stops.

"Do you even _know_ anything about ghosts?" 

"There's no such thing as ghosts," Parker says.

Jo snorts. "Yeah, I can see you're going to be a lot of help." Not that she knows for sure _what_ this thing is, but a ghost is always on your top ten list. "Wait, how do you know about hunters but not believe in ghosts?"

Parker shrugs. "We had a cursed boiler in the basement in one of the houses, when I was a kid. That's different."

"Cursed boilers are easier to believe than ghosts?"

"Yeah," Parker says. "You should come talk to Nate. He'll figure it out."

Jo is seriously not going to let a civilian 'figure out' her hunt for her. He'll either tell her it's all part of whatever convoluted scamming business they're involved in or get his people caught in the crossfire. "Does this Nate guy believe in cursed boilers, too?"

[TBC...]


End file.
